Technology relating to the Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices allows various devices such as home appliances (e.g., power/water meters, televisions, refrigerators, lighting, or the like), smart watches, automobiles, and other types of electronic devices to be connected to a cellular network (e.g., the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) network) for always-ON connectivity. Currently, each IoT device, including devices belonging to the same user, requires a separate subscription to be connected to the network. Each separate subscription is identified by a different International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) and enabled by a different physical Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card or a virtual SIM. However, a user may have multiple devices (e.g., a smartphone and one or more IoT devices) to be registered to the network, where each device requires a different subscription. An increase in the number of subscriptions that the network needs to manage can be directly proportional to the increase in the number of IoT devices. Thus, due to the recent trend of each user owning an increasing number of IoT devices, registering each IoT device belonging to the same user using a different subscription (e.g., different IMSIs) for each device can considerably increase overhead and congestion for the network.
Currently, communication networks fail to adequately support registering two or more communication devices with a same IMSI. For example, during the authentication procedures, a network identifies different devices with different IMSIs and cannot distinguish different devices with a same IMSI. In addition, the network is currently not capable of determining device capabilities of two or more devices with a same IMSI. Furthermore, paging occasions are assigned based on the IMSI. Thus, paging collisions can be pervasive.